


A Very Large Spider

by ashesandhoney



Category: Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Canon Era, F/M, Gen, a little bit silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-15 01:57:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7201460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>William Herondale spends more time drunk than he would like to admit. His next door neighbour is pretty and not quite as human as he expected her to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Very Large Spider

**Author's Note:**

> To understand the danger in sending me prompts the prompt that started this was: 
> 
> I know we've never talked, but there's a huge spider in my apartment and I need you to kill it. Any ship.

Will heard the first scream and ignored it. The drama of other people didn’t interest him. He would have continued to ignore it but second scream wasn’t alarm, it was fear. He stood up and realized he was drunk. He grabbed a pair of knives from where he’d dumped his weapons belt over the back of a chair and hid them in his sleeve. He still wore gear. He hadn’t changed. He’d just sat down and had a drink and now he was unsteady and making the excellent choice to go look into the neighbour’s petty problems.

He looked out his door at the one across the hall. The door was ajar and he could hear people moving around inside. A young couple lived there. He’d never met them, the man had blonde hair and drank at one of the same Downworld bars Will sometimes found himself at. He’d seen the woman from a distance but never close enough to identify her as more than tall and brunette. He pushed the door open with a toe and leaned against the frame as he peered into the apartment. He imagined he might look rakish or dashing but really, he couldn’t quite stand unassisted.

“Hello?” he called.

There was a dull thud and a skittering and then pounding footsteps and the woman was the one who came wheeling around the corner. She wore a plain blue dress, her hair had fallen loose around her face and she held a fry pan like a weapon. 

“What’s that now?” he asked and was momentarily unsure if the question made sense. How many had he had? How full had the bottle been when he’d started? Why did he keep doing this to himself?

“There’s a spider,” she said in an American accent.

She was an arm’s length away now and still held the pan tightly in both hands like a batter in some mundane sport. Her face was pretty and fierce. Her eyes were gray. They were a soft, misty kind of gray but for a brief painful moment they reminded Will of Jem’s silver eyes. Will shut down that thought, pushed out the image of Jem’s face. He would not cry in front of a stranger. He hadn’t cried in front of anyone since he’d been 12 years old. He hadn’t cried at all until almost two weeks after the funeral but he’d cried in the six months since. Usually drunk. Always alone.

“A spider?” Will said and raised his eyebrows at her.

“It’s a big spider,” she said in a sharp voice.

There was a shuffling and that scuttling sound again. Will looked up, expecting a cat to come round the corner. Instead a spider larger than the pan she held came ticking around the corner on legs longer than his arms. It wasn’t black, it was the brownish red of dried blood and it blinked a spread of glossy mismatched eyes at them.  

Beside him she suppressed a scream and turned to face it with her frying pan held out. Will knew the name of this demon. It was small, sometimes traveled in swarms, was usually directed by something larger and smarter. The name wouldn’t come through the drunkenness. He grabbed the bustle on the woman’s dress and pulled her backwards, she stumbled but it got her out of his line of sight.

He was drunk but he was very, very good. All he did anymore was train. He trained, he read, he drank and none of it filled up any of the empty places he had in his heart. He pulled the seraph blade out of his sleeve, had to try twice to slur out the name of it and then threw it at the spider thing before it could complete the leap it had been hunkering down for. It shrieked. Shrieked and twitched and then collapsed in on itself like it crumpling paper. The girl beside him lowered her pan and stared open mouthed.

“How many knives do you have?” she asked.

“Here? Two, one now,” he said.

“How drunk are you?” she asked.

“About as drunk as your husband gets down at the Devil’s,” Will said to her. He’d lived his life too long under that lie of a curse and now he didn’t know how to stop being awful. It was like a reflex he didn’t know how to unlearn.

“Brother,” she said.

“Huh?” he asked.

“Nate is my brother, not my husband,” she said.

“Well, at least he isn’t your fault then. Wonder he isn’t married,” Will said.

“Wonder you aren’t,” she responded and Will smiled at her. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. It wasn’t friendly or even particularly kind but he hadn’t smiled at anyone in a very long time. He didn’t wipe it off his face. She hadn’t relaxed, she’d lowered but not put down the frying pan. Will looked at the splatter of ichor and the gouges in the wood. He reached out and put his hand over hers and gently pulled the handle away.

“It’s dead,” he said.

First a smile, now he was attempting to be comforting. The devils in hell were probably making snow forts and wearing flower crowns. He was going to make a mess of it but he gave her another smile as she let him take the pan away from her. He put it down on a small table nearby and pulled out his other blade. It was a runed knife, not a seraph blade but he hoped it would be good enough. With it in hand he the way through the apartment. She lifted her skirts to step around the mess on the floor and followed him.

“There’s brave and there’s stupid, those things aren’t always alone,” he said.

“And you’d rather face it by yourself?” she asked.

“I have weaponry and training,” he said.

“And smell like a distillery,” she said.

He held her gaze. She wasn’t stupid. She truly thought he might need help and she might be able to provide it. He went back and got her pan. She smiled at him when he handed it to her. First he smiled at someone and then they returned it. Hell was certainly freezing over. He swept her tiny flat. It was just a little larger than his with a second bedroom barely big enough for the bed in it. Everything was in order, clean and neat. He paused to glance over the shelf of books in the tiny bedroom. Somethings he had read, some he hadn’t. He had the absurd desire to ask her to borrow the Jules Verne.

He was turning around to ask her when she screamed. She was wheeling backwards away from him with the pan up more as a shield than a weapon as a second spider thing bore down on her. She fell and scrambled backwards, the demon tearing holes in her skirts as it attempted to climb higher on her body. She screamed again and before Will could make it across the room her hands lit up in blue flame and the demon shrieked. Will sliced through it with the blade and it crumpled down into pieces in her lap.

He grabbed her and pulled her to her feet. She fell against his chest, leaned against him like she trusted him to keep her safe. He held her with one arm as she shook and sputtered but couldn’t get words out.

“I thought you were human,” he said.

“I am human,” she gasped out.

Will looked down at her and she was staring at her hands which were bright red, burned and shuddering. She wasn’t human but she didn’t know it. She’d never done anything like that before.  He pulled her across the hall and dropped her down onto one of the chairs in his living room. There was warding here, it would be harder for anything to get to her. Her arm was bleeding, her dress was shredded and she cradled her hands to stomach like she needed to protect them.

For the first time in a long time, Will didn’t look at the half finished bottle of whiskey and want it. He just moved it out of the way to go get a medical kit he’d brought with him when he moved out of the Institute. Inside was a salve that he gently spread over her palms while she winced and watched him with eyes that looked more blue than they had the first time she’d looked at him.

“You are safe here,” he said and she nodded at him.

“I told you it was a big spider,” she said once he’d finished wrapping bandages around her hands.

Will looked at her and a smile broke across his face. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was her strange calm trust in him, maybe it was truly funny, he wasn’t sure what it was but for the first time in six months, he laughed. He laughed hard.

“It was, wasn’t it?” he said.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Sir Lancelot, slayer of spiders and dragons and rescuer of maidens,” he said with a flourish that might have been gallant if he weren’t still drunk.

“Hello Lancelot, my name is Guinevere,” she said with a little bit of sarcasm and he laughed again.

“William Herondale,” he said, “Will.”

“Tessa Gray,” she said.

“Lovely to meet you,” he said and he lifted her hand and kissed the back of her fingers where they were not burned or bandaged like he was truly a knight in a fairy tale. She smiled at him and he smiled back.


End file.
